Initially, Gaskell wanted the title of the novel to be Margaret Hale, but Charles Dickens, the editor of Household Words, the magazine in which the novel was serialized, insisted on North and South.

Margaret Hale is nineteen years old and before she was 10, lived in Helstone in Hampshire, in the south of England, with her parents—Richard, an Anglican minister, and Maria—and older brother, Frederick.

Mr Hale, however, had begun to question his faith and the doctrines laid out in the Book of Common Prayer.

Quitting his profession, Mr Hale moved his wife and daughter to Milton, in the north of England, where he took up work as a tutor.

Margaret takes an instant dislike to Thornton, seeing him as the embodiment of the harsh, working-class north.

"He did not understand who she was," when he first saw her, "as he caught the simple, straight, unabashed look, which showed that his being there was of no concern to the beautiful countenance, and called up no flush of surprise to the pale ivory of the complexion.

Margaret eventually comes to feel at home in the north; she makes friends, including Bessy Higgins, a dying young woman.

Margaret insists that it was her responsibility to save him because she had sent him out to talk to the men, and that she would have done the same thing for any other "poor desperate man in that crowd".

The first, Mr Thornton, sees Margaret with an unknown man "with whom she had stood in an attitude of such familiar confidence".

Margaret sees him watching her, and spends much of the rest of the novel bearing the guilt of having fallen from Thornton's regard.

Margaret and her father slowly begin to recover from Mrs Hale's death—they are helped by the news of Frederick's safe return to Spain, though not by Bessy's death.

She spends much time considering the events of the past and longs to set the record straight with Thornton and win back his regard, which she believes is her only hope in repairing the damaged relationship with him.

She longs for any word from Milton and, believing that she threw her one chance for happiness in marriage away, she declares to her cousin that she will never marry.

Edith and her mother even hint to Henry to begin wooing Margaret, again; they dream of the whole family living together, forever.

When Margaret presents Thornton with a generous business proposal that will save the mill, he realises that she is no longer indifferent or antagonistic to him.